Armlets are decorative bands usually worn above
the bicep and made from a precious material
such as gold or silver. Why then have these three
bronze sculptures been given that title?

Based on native plants, fern, palm and
flowering flax, they are sited in Grafton Road in a
small plot which is formally planted to resemble
an eighteenth century European garden. Armlet
comes from a series of the artist’s works which
are titled to make reference to the adornments of
classical antiquity – amulet, necklet, coronet,
diadem. Two of the sets of three stems – Spray
and Corsage – were also titled for the European
tradition of women wearing flowers for special
occasions. The three stems that make up Armlet
are meant to stand as sentinels in attendance
upon Mother Nature, and to draw attention to her
beauty through their own.

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As a group of works, the series that Armlet
comes from was first exhibited collectively in the
winter of 1993, and the work was purchased for
The University of Auckland Art Collection the
following year.

Christine Hellyar has had a long association
with this University. She graduated with a
Diploma of Fine Arts (Hons) from Elam School of
Fine Arts in 1969, focusing on landscapes and
land forms in her sculpture. Endlessly experimental
in her practice, she was the first artist to mould
her work in latex directly from native flora. By the
mid-1980s she had established herself as one of
the leading sculptors of her generation. She
returned to Elam to teach in the Sculpture
Department where she stayed for over a decade.
Maintaining an invigorating sculptural installation
which now occupies her full-time, she now has
commissions in every major New Zealand
sculpture park and also installed in many public
and private buildings.

In writing to the University in 1994 while still
teaching at Elam, the artist drew a plan of where
she would like her sculpture sited, commenting
that she found the proportions of the small garden
at the back of the German Department to be
most suitable. She felt that the Grafton Road
garden had a contemplative nature, with seating
that made it appropriate for the addition of an art
work. She also observed that the garden was
relatively private.

Writing more recently about her concerns at
that time, the artist has identified her principal
interest as being in the ways in which humans
domesticate the sublime in nature, subjecting the
wilderness to the mowing, pruning and clipping
which makes a garden.

Bronze as a material carries historical
associations and the artist has used it here
knowingly. The great civilisations of antiquity
worked in bronze for art, from the time of the
introduction of this alloy of copper and tin for
edged weapons. Having worked for a long period
in rubber, plaster and found materials, Christine
Hellyar relished deploying the loaded properties
of this metal to contribute to a long tradition of
civic sculpture.

“I like the tool and weapon quality of the
bronze,” she writes. Ironically, bronze can be both
solid and ephemeral. While it seems like a
permanent material (in contrast to the
biodegradable media the artist has often used)
relatively few large ancient bronzes have survived.
Many more works in ceramic and stone have
come through the centuries, even if only in
fragments, as many bronzes were melted down to
make weapons in times of war, or to create new
sculptures commemorating the victors.

Commemoration is part of the content of this
work. Native vegetation has been lost through the
process of colonisation, and this is a city where
even the Mäori names which were based on
plants have been replaced. For example,
Maungakiekie – mountain of kiekie (Freycinetia
banksii) – is now One Tree Hill, and like the rest of
Tamaki makau rau which has been cleared of its
coastal broadleaf forest, few remnants of flora
persist to remind us of what has gone.

The artist writes that she likes to think of the
three different kinds of plants in Armlet dancing
together in this European garden – fern, palm and
flowering flax united once again as they were in
pre-colonial times.

Linda Tyler

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The Artist

Hellyar was born and raised in New Plymouth, NZ. Her key inspiration for her art is the beaches and bushes both in New Plymouth and the Auckland scene where she is now based. She spent four years studying at the University of Auckland specialising in sculpture. Her key influences for her work are Louise Bourgeois and Robert Smithson. She taught part time at the Elam School of Fine Arts in 1981 till 1996, then moved to work full time in her studio. During this time she was awarded the Adam Award for her significant contribution to the New Zealand art scene. In 2003 she won a Department of Conservation residency and spent six weeks living up Mount Taranaki making drawings and sculptures. Her work usually reflects her interest in tribal Ethnology and in Landscape Gardens. Her work has been exhibited in Australia, USA, England, Holland, Spain, Hungary, Japan, Korea and Singapore. Her overall theme present in her art is related to the domestication and socialisation of the found landscape.